Nearly every 7 digit number can be found in the first 100M digits of pi. Search for your favorites, or simply bask in the wonders of math and probability: www.benfry.com/pi/ Happy π day!

“The second-system effect (also second-system syndrome) is the tendency for a successful first system (often small and relatively elegant) to be followed by a second system that becomes over-engineered or bloated.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-...

There I fixed it

The NYT style guide

I have a new digital illustraion course live now! If interested - sign up here www.jamesgilleardacademy.com/beginnercourse

This frisky pair of bongos, a critically endangered species of African antelope, is settling into the zoo's Africa area. Meet Banjo and Bentley!

No JavaScript! Hilarious. Love this so much.

[hospital] SURGEON: [lowers mask] I'm sorry, we were unable to separate the art from the artist ME: are they S: yes, they’re still an asshole

Using a great typeface is like cheating at design because your work instantly gets so much better. After years of mucking, we started using MD System in a prototype. Seeing what the tool *could* look like was a huge motivation to finally make it happen. Once we saw it, we couldn't wait to build it.

Rest in Peace, Robert Tinney, the artist behind many of—and the best of—these covers: tinney.net/in-memoriam

This piece was published exactly a year ago, and at the time I /hoped/ it was at least a bit alarmist, but it has proven to be overwhelmingly correct, and perhaps even understated. Well worth reading to understand where we are, where we're headed in the US: www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

Fifteen years later, it's a new version of “if IBM's Watson is so f*ing smart, why can't it fix IBM's stock price?” …but this is even more on-point.

Can't get over how gleefully people use the word “agentic” as if it doesn't sound like a terrible disease. “Millions were sickened by Agentic Flu and thousands more died of the hemorrhagic fever before scientists were able to identify a vaccine candidate…” www.apple.com/newsroom/202...

Always appreciate people who can put numbers in perspective.

“my dream of combining my loves of math, art, and teaching into a book is finally a reality” —@gwenbeads.bsky.social www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook...

Happy large boulder the size of a small boulder day for all who celebrate

Beautiful perspective from this map of the world re-oriented using the “Spilhaus” projection, which depicts Earth as a single, connected ocean. From Woods Hole's “Why the Ocean” campaign: www.whoi.edu/campaign/why...

I wrote the speech I *wish* Chuck Schumer would give tonight - as an actual opposition leader. Here it is: "My fellow Americans: At this hour, an unrestrained force of militarized and violent federal officers is carrying out a project of ethnic cleansing in the streets of American cities." 1/14

A reminder that we can expect and must demand so more from political leaders—including moral clarity. I was fortunate to have Ami, a great speechwriter, work with me on several White House speeches. Read what he would have Schumer say in an alternate parallel universe of courage and conviction 🧵

“The bugs are real. The math is not. All estimates are made up. Your frustration, however, is valid.” www.bugsappleloves.com

This is art. The writing style of ChatGPT, recursively explained using that same voice.

21,689 rows of film data (100 MB file!) and filtering by Director instantaneously on hover. All in the browser, no roundtrip to a server. Just insane what we can do here: rowboat.net/f/7vb8dx84 (I'm actually moving slower in the first half to make it less confusing—second half is actual speed.)

Boosting for 1) using bread for infographics and 2) what the costs of running a business actually look like

I really, really like this post from design consultancy Fathom: it’s a thoughtful take on why they’re not planning to incorporate “generative AI” into their practice. www.fathom.info/notebook/260...

An excellent piece by @kayserifserif.place about how we're thinking about Generative AI at @fathom.info, focused on the things we /want/ to build—from the artifacts we produce to the internal culture that makes it happen: www.fathom.info/notebook/260...

While trying to sort out and assemble my own thoughts about generative AI, it's been helpful to take in the work of others who are more articulate about it. www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

“You open…an article on some subject you know well… You read & see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the ‘wet streets cause rain’ stories.”

Couple years ago, I had like a one line quote in Wired about Apple's App Store policy hell. After the article got attention, they actually deployed comms people to lie & try to scare the writer into removing the quote. So it's hilarious they can't seem to find aaaanyone to comment on this. 🙈

Holy fuck they actually did it

Scottish gritter truck names are on another level

A detail.

One of my favorite things about living in a city is catching all the different languages being spoken. What a treat.

Emily Bressler's “I Work For an Evil Company, but Outside Work, I’m Actually a Really Good Person” for McSweeney‘s might be one of the best things written this year, and the backstory only confirms and further elevates it: www.patreon.com/posts/top-25...

“6 or 7 characters should be plenty for a password, or maybe 8 if you must”

For our holiday mailing, we gave our printers (inkjet, plotter, filament, and Paul) a break, and prepared an animated minisite with recipes from everyone in the studio. Inspired by LEGO (or Minecraft, or pixels, or things that are blocky), it's a fun range of recipes & characters behind them.

jenny holzer (2012)

A fun writeup from Ellory about what we've been up to at Fathom over the past year. If we were good at the social, we might do this every few months like reasonable people. Instead we're going long form, and if folks don't read it, we're gonna go even longer in 2026.

😍

Fascinating piece about the manifold problems with data centers in space: taranis.ie/datacenters-... It's not just the heat problems, but it doesn't appear to make sense on any dimension… complexity, size, reliability, cost, anything.

I'm what now?

Super impressed with this extremely well-documented, and well-designed, open source hacking project. What a pleasant surprise: www.typeframe.net

These are magnificent.

“So yeah, I’m having a great time with Qobuz, both because the product is genuinely better than Spotify, and because it feels like sweet release to be free of that shitpit.” www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/a-complete...

Did you know?

BestChristmasSongOf '70, '71, '72, '73, '74, '75, '76, '77, '78, '79, '80, '81, '82, '83, '84, '85, '86, '87, '88, '89, '90, '91, '92, '93, '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, '00, '01, '02, '03, '04, '05, '06, '07, '08, '09, '10, '11, '12, '13, '14, '15, '16, '17, '18, '19, '20, '21, '22, '23, '24, '25

Down the rabbit hole of “what European countries are not part of NATO and why?” this morning. The history of Irish neutrality: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_n...

A charming short film on how a Foley artist would sound design a day in an ordinary life. “Running hands through spaghetti noodles stands in for hair washing…” [kottke.org]

I'm terrible at marketing so I asked ChatGPT 5 to make an ad for rowboat.net

Inverse Histogram of Seltzer Flavor Preference at New England-based Design & Software Development Studio (2025)

Fun with streets… from 2007, here's what a map of the United States* looks like made up of only roads. No other features have been added to this image, however they emerge as roads avoid mountains, and sparse areas convey low population. * the “lower 48,” sorry AK & HI www.benfry.com/allstreets/